Paladins developer addresses plagiarism allegations

Following the recent allegations of copying character designs and other mechanics, Hi-Rez Studios, the developers behind Paladins took to Reddit this week to address these claims. On the game’s official Subreddit, the studio mentions that the vast majority of the inspiration for Paladins came from older projects that the studio has worked on in the past such as Global Agenda.

In the Reddit post, Hi-Rez Studio comments, “Global Agenda was released in 2010 and we learned many lessons from it. It had too many features and game modes for us to be able to maintain enough depth into each one (5 different PvP modes, AvA, Solo/Co-Op PvE, Raids, Double agent, open world missions as well as complex MMO features like crafting, auction system, AVA world map, and much more)”

The post also states that when Overwatch was first announced, the team was surprised that its gameplay was very similar to Paladins, which was still in development at the time. They also mentioned in the post that they even considered changing the overall design of Paladins.

Hi-Rez states, “We initially tried to find different ways to differentiate on game-play (different TTK, different style maps and game modes, different theme, etc), but the feedback from our tests, stats, and surveys showed that only a small part of our population was enjoying that style of game. In the end we said screw it and just made what we thought best, and closest to our original vision, even if people would think it’s too close to Overwatch.”

The studio remarks that while both Paladins and Overwatch are similar, it would be impossible for a development team of their size to create a game that copies Overwatch in a year.

Near the end of their Reddit Post, Hi-Rez studio closes by stating, “While Overwatch is a fine game, we want people to understand that game development is an iterative process with many ideas coming from past projects. This is true for Hi-Rez and almost every other game studio. For a hero shooter, the game that deserves the most credit for the genre is TF2.”

About The Author

Darius has had an odd fascination with games since a very young age. Any game with a bizarre art style or a soundtrack that speaks to him will instantly make his top ten games of all time. His favorite genres are MMOs and fighting games.